The Earthquake Bird
by violence and birdsong
Summary: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
1. Chapter 1

_You are the darkness._

In the darkness, he touched the wispy strands of her hair fanned out across her pillowcase, his motions illuminated by the silvery glow of moonlight. She remained asleep, her breathing even and steady, unaware of the presence by her bed, the hand near her face.

He studied the slope of her nose, the curve of her mouth, and the steady rise and fall of a chest protecting lungs that no longer needed air. But it was such a practiced and habitual motion, the rise and fall of her chest, that even in death she looked flushed with life.

His fingertips wandered to the place where her heart once was and settled tentatively, lightly, to search for a nonexistent beat.

The memory of her naked astride him, begging so sweetly for _Please, Tate, more,_ fleeted across his mind, a whispery tendril of smoke that was gone as soon as it appeared.

He watched intently the flutter of her eyelids in her sleep, the slight twitch of her fingers in dreamland.

"What are you dreaming about?" he breathed into the night, his words melting into the space between his body and hers.

She continued sleeping, unaware of his presence so close to hers.

"_Please, Tate, more," she begged, a short gasp ripped from her lips as he gave a particularly hard thrust upwards into her, their bodies melded together in a flush of hard muscle and soft skin. Smirking, he dragged his finger along the curve of her prominent hipbone and his hand wandered further south, meeting the slippery, wet flesh of her cunt. Without removing himself, he pushed further into her, hitting her cervix just so he could watch her mouth drop open and eyes roll back._

He did a lot of things just so he could study her reactions; she was endlessly fascinating, this sleeping ghost of a girl in front of him.

_You're the only light I've ever known._

Violet stirred to consciousness, and he watched, fascinated, as her feet moved first, position shifting, face burrowing further into the pillow where she rested her pretty head.

A moment passed, and her arms moved, fingers flexing. He watched as her eyelids fluttered faster; the tiny motions of miniscule veins across her eyelids, furiously pumping blood, sped up.

She awoke with a hitch in her throat and a name on her lips, but he was gone before her breath materialized to speech, before the desperate "_Tate,"_ could tumble out of her mouth.

He could study her in her sleep, but he couldn't face the inevitable accusation in her brown eyes.

_His gaze dropped to obscene sight of her small opening swallowing his fleshy, thick cock. He studied the slick glaze of wetness that coated his throbbing member as he pumped back into her suppliant body. Fuck, he thought in a haze of pleasure, her pussy was so hot and tight; they must have been made for each other, the way she fit around him so snugly. But it's only when she raises a hand to his face and runs her unsteady, sweaty fingers across his strong jawline and whispers, "Tate," that he feels a rush of possessiveness towards this girl— she's his, forever and always, and he will never give her up._

He watched from the shadows as she ran shaky fingers through her thicket of hair, lips parted to take short gasps of air into her dead lungs. He imagined watching her watch him take those delicate pianist's fingers into his mouth, two of them to be precise, and lave and probe at that sensitive web of flesh that connected them until her gasps became pants of pleasure, and then he would _bite down_ and she would yelp and cry and beg for his forgiveness as he licked the blood from his lips.

He would grin at the sight of her lovely eyes filling up with salty tears, and then, as she cried over her broken fingers, he would gather her into his arms and she would bury her face into his chest as she had burrowed her face into that pillow. She would trustingly press her body so closely up against his and beg for his forgiveness...

Tate felt a tightening in his groin, a twitch of pleasure, at the thought. He would fuck away her tears, press his mouth to hers and make her taste the heady iron of her blood on his lips, and her mouth would part and moan for him.

_You're all I want_.

Violet threw the thick comforter off her body and gently placed her head between her knees, breathing deeply, as if woken from a nightmare.

He watched as Vivien swooped in on the scene, gathering her shivering daughter into her arms.

"Shh, it's okay Violet," she assured her as ragged sobs tore from Violet's throat, "You did good, sweetheart, you did what you had to do."

Fury burned white-hot through his veins as he heard mother talking to daughter. How dare she comfort _his_ Violet? How dare she lead _his_ Violet away from him?

Vivien continued to murmur comforting assurances into her daughter's ear, and for a maniacal second, Tate envisioned Claudius pouring the deadly sweet hemlock into the unsuspecting ear of the King of Denmark.

_How fucking tragic,_ Tate thought to himself darkly.

And in the silence of the dark, the ghost whispered to Violet, _"Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,"_ and she, the pliant and filial daughter, listened with attentive ears and shoved aside her love.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: The Byron letter has been edited, with a chunk of it taken out, so that it wouldn't divert too much from my own writing.

Also, if you love dark Tate, check out colourgirl22's youtube channel and watch her AMHS videos: youtube . com/user/colourgirl22#p/u/2/F1qHzD8NVSA. Her videos are incredible.

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><p><em>You have to pay for what you did.<em>

Chad's face slammed down into the coffee table, once, twice, three times.

"Stop, stop," Chad moaned, blood pouring from his temple as Tate's grip on the back of his neck tightened and his face was forced down once again.

The distinct sound of snapped bone resounded throughout the room, blended with Chad's cries of pain, as his skull split.

Tate gave the man beneath him a cruel grin. "You aren't so tough now, are you?" he taunted with a sneer.

For a moment, Tate wondered what he was doing— how was he capable of such violence? But then he remembered the accusation in her eyes, the betrayal, and he remembered that this man beneath him was the one to plant that seed of pain; Chad had opened Violet's eyes to the very horrors Tate sought to protect her from.

Anger rolled through Tate's body like thunder, and he waited for the crack in Chad's skull to heal before he smashed his face into the bloodied wood once more.

The room looked like a horror scene— the blood splatter across the walls looked like it belonged there, and Tate thought that the nouveau-riche wallpaper looked better with it.

Tate lowered his head to the beaten pulp of the other man's face and dug two fingers into the burst of bone that revealed the man's scrambled gray mess of brain matter. Chad's mouth opened wider to let out another howl of pain, but his shredded vocals only allowed for a hoarse cry.

Tate lowered his lips to the other man's ear and took a moment to savor the heavy scent of iron. "You will _never again_ fuck with what's mine; if you so much as _look_ at her, _talk _to her, or even _think_ about her, I will make our little session here look like child's play," he snarled, his voice low and malicious, and removed his fingers from the unnatural cavity he had created from Chad's head.

Chad slumped to the floor, unable to move as his wounds slowly reknit themselves. There was blood, brain, and piss everywhere.

Moira appeared in the doorway and gave Tate a distasteful look with that milky eye of hers. "You always do leave such a mess," the old woman tutted, and Tate gave a careless shrug, unconcerned.

"What do you think you're here for?" he shot back, annoyed, and went to go wash the blood off of his clothes and body.

He made his way to the bathroom but found it locked; he opened it anyways, muscles relaxing with the rush of steam that greeted him.

She stood in the shower, figure clouded by the distorted glass. The water must have been scalding her skin for all the steam it created, and Tate licked his lips at the thought of her breasts, stomach, and ass red from the heat.

_You're all I have._

He leaned against the tiled wall, uncaring of the humidity, and watched the outline of her hand lather her body with soap and slide down her stomach towards the apex of her legs.

He imagined her fingers working in and out of her body, her lips parted, her head thrown back in ecstasy. He would teach her how to touch herself correctly, how to curl her fingers ever-so-slightly in that come-hither motion to reach that spongy piece of tissue that would make her cry out his name.

His eyes lidded, half-closed, and he brought a firm hand to the tightening bulge of his jeans, soaked with blood, and allowed the pressure of his own fingers to relieve some of his need.

But he wanted more. With Violet, he always wanted more.

He imagined her on the floor in front of him, resting on her knees, like a beloved pet, staring up at him with those watery brown eyes of hers. Her dainty fingers would work to free his manhood from the restrictions of his jeans, and she would, fumbling but oh-so eager to please, grasp his thickening cock in her hands and experimentally flick her tongue across the tip, tasting, curiously and virginally, the salty headiness of his precum.

_He would thread his fingers in her beautiful blonde hair and guide his cock into her mouth and teach her how he liked to be sucked._ Tate rubbed himself faster through his jeans, his breath harshening. _She would try her best to swallow all of him, but she wouldn't be able to take him fully. She would try to withdraw and pull back and finish him with her hands, but he would thrust deeper into the warm cavern of her mouth. He would thrust deep and hard; she would gag and choke around his cock, and those sweet, tight, wet contractions of her throat gagging around him, trying to force him out, would make him cum. He would cum against the back of her throat, and her trusting eyes would be filled with tears, as she had no choice but to swallow._

Tate opened his eyes as his hips slowed their jerking motions, satiated for the moment. His jeans were past salvation, caked in his cum and Chad's blood. His gaze returned to the oblivious girl in the shower, and he felt a rush of affection for this girl who could make him cum in his pants like a virgin.

But before she could reach to turn off the showerhead, he slipped out of the room, unnoticed, to go take his own shower in a different bathroom.

_I can't be with you_.

Violet dried her hair as she wandered around the room that she had once called her own when her heart still beat. She went to reach for the hair tie that lay on her bedside table when her eyes fell on an old, worn copy of a collection of the letters of Lord Byron.

Her chest ached as she reached with trembling fingers to touch the yellowed pages, the battered cover.

She looked around the room, gazed hard at the shadows to discern if she had any unwanted visitors, then deemed it safe to pick the book up. Her fingers tingled, and she flipped to a page in the middle that had been dog-eared, smoothed out, and dog-eared again.

_My dearest Teresa,_

_I have read this book in your garden; my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. _

_You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love. _

_But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us— but they never will, unless you wish it._

Her eyes flickered across the underlined and highlighted words, and her heart raced at the thought of Tate standing here before her, holding this same text in his hand, mulling over the words with that roguish frown of his that appeared whenever he was concentrating.

"Violet?" Vivien knocked on the door, and Violet quickly set down the book, giving the door a second glance before calling back out to her mom.

"Come in," she said, and checked once again to make sure that everything was in order within the room and to shake off the unnerving feeling that she was being watched.

Vivien opened the door and stepped into the room, her eyes tender as she took in the haphazard sight of her firstborn wearing a towel turban and oversized shirt.

"I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing," she said, "You know, how you're holding up with everything. I know it's been hard for you."

Violet sighed and rolled her eyes, picking at a loose thread on her towel. "I'm _fine, _mom," she stressed, crossing her legs beneath her as she sat on the bed. "I've been fine. You can't baby me forever!"

They both winced at her poor choice of words, and Vivien reached out to tuck an escaped strand of wet hair behind Violet's ear.

"I know that, but you know that I'm only trying to look out for you," Vivien reassured her daughter, and Violet couldn't help but remember that the last person to "look out for her" ended up raping her mom and had a penchant for killing people.

Nevertheless, Violet dropped her glare and let her shoulders sag with the sigh that burst forth from her lips.

"I said goodbye, I let him go," Violet insisted, tugging at the strand her mother had placed behind her ear. "I'm not going to forgive him."

Vivien smiled good-naturedly at her stubborn daughter, knowingly: "Just because you said goodbye, just because you told him to go away, that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt you, Violet. If you ever want to talk about this…"

Violet cringed and waved off her mother's concern. "Nope, I don't have anything to talk about," she declared and shooed Vivien out of the room.

"Did she talk to you…?" Violet overheard her father's hushed whisper from outside the door, and she rolled her eyes.

Her parents gossiped like teenagers.

Tate slipped into her room, unnoticed, as she shuffled through her dresser drawer for a pair of pants.

He watched her bend over to her ankles to pull up a pair of jeans, appreciative of the curve of her body.

As if aware of his presence, she whipped around, eyes wild.

"Tate?" she demanded of the empty room, "Tate, stop spying on me."

He chuckled, the sound warm and familiar to her ears, but refused to show himself.

"I mean it, Tate," she warned. "Go away."

But the order held none of its past firmness, and he remained, albeit silently, to watch her take the towel off her head and brush her damp hair.

Her eyes flickered around the room suspiciously as she did so, as though she suspected that he might appear any second.

He walked over to where she was standing and stood directly in front of her. He reached a hand up to touch her wet locks and bent his head to ghost his lips over hers.

"I love you," he murmured into her soft lips. She closed her eyes as she heard the words and felt his touch. But when she opened them, her phantom lover was nowhere to be found.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry it's taken so long for this update! It's a short chapter, but hopefully it will appease you somewhat. I'm struggling to get this plot in motion, and then I plan on the updates coming more regularly. As always, please tell me what you think, I'd love to hear it.

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><p><em>Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.<em>

Hayden grinned, white teeth flashing in the dark. "I can help you with that," she purred, sinking to her knees before the blonde boy sitting in the chair. Tate's eyes snapped open as he fisted himself, and he kicked her away, as if she were an offending piece of meat, before relaxing back into the chair, his hand still on his cock.

"I know we're dead, but I don't want to even begin to imagine all the diseases you had festering inside your body when you were alive," he sneered, closing his eyes to revive the image of Violet beneath his body. He resumed lazily stroking himself.

"She's never going to love you again," Hayden snapped, unaware of the petulant ring in her voice.

Tate, eyes still shut, half-smiled. It was simultaneously cruel, sweet, and indulgent. "She never stopped loving me," he said, a hitch in his breathing as he moved his hand faster along his length. "Violet's mine, and she knows it," and with that, he came.

"I have some information that may be of interest to you," Hayden tried again, a dark smile gracing her bow lips.

Tate opened his eyes and slackened his grip on his spent cock. His eyes narrowed.

"Do tell."

She innocently twirled a strand of red hair between her fingers, looking at him through lidded eyes, lusty and alight with dark giddiness. "There's a new family moving in," she told him with a grin.

He straightened, startled despite himself. "And how come I didn't know about this?" he demanded, incensed. "I know everything that goes on in this house."

Hayden's grin widened and she sunk back down to her knees and crawled into the space between his legs. "There's a first time for everything," she teased, and reached a bold hand forward. Tate sneered at this and settled back into his chair.

"You'd better not let that infested mouth of yours come anywhere near me," he warned cruelly, and imagined that the fingers stroking him belonged to his Violet.

Upstairs, Violet flipped through a dusty copy of _Grimms' Fairy Tales_ she had filched from the attic when playing with Beau. The pages were worn and the illustrations, once vibrant with color, were faded.

Rapunzel was a particular favorite, and, Violet mused drily, it was no wonder why.

_One day a young prince came through the forest where the tower stood. He saw the beautiful Rapunzel standing at her window, heard her sing with her sweet voice, and fell in love with her. At first Rapunzel was frightened, but soon she came to like the young king so well that she arranged for him to come every day and be pulled up. Thus they lived in joy and pleasure for a long time._

_The fairy did not discover what was happening until one day Rapunzel said to her, "Frau Gothel, tell me why it is that my clothes are all too tight. They no longer fit me."_

_"You godless child," said the fairy. "What am I hearing from you?" She immediately saw how she had been deceived and was terribly angry. She took Rapunzel's beautiful hair, wrapped it a few times around her left hand, grasped a pair of scissors with her right hand, and snip snip, cut it off. Then she sent Rapunzel into a wilderness where she suffered greatly and where, after a time, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. _

_On the evening of the same day that she sent Rapunzel away, the fairy tied the cut-off hair to the hook at the top of the tower, and when the prince called out:_

_Rapunzel, Rapunzel!_

_Let down your hair!_

_She let down the hair. The prince was startled to find the fairy instead of his beloved Rapunzel. _

The following pages were missing, haphazardly torn out and thrown somewhere else, un-locatable and lost to her. Violet touched the remaining pages with a gentle hand, ugly thoughts bubbling to the forefront of her mind.

Violet didn't feel like innocent Rapunzel. Violet felt like Frau Gothel, jealous of her kin, angry and vengeful that Rapunzel would bare the children of the prince while she herself remained childless and unloved.

But, Violet thought to herself as she pushed away those feelings of resentment, that was the house whispering those things into her ears. It was the house that planted those crude images of Tate fucking her mother beneath her eyelids.

She took a calming breath.

"Boo," a voice whispered in front of her, and her eyes snapped open.

"What are you doing here?" she asked rudely, and Travis responded with a jaunty laugh.

"I figured you might need some company is all," he said with a grin, smoothly snatching the book from her hands.

"Well you thought wrong!" Violet snapped, alarmed, as his eyes skimmed over the page she had been reading from.

"Rapunzel?" he asked with a bemused shake of his head. "How poetic," he joked, then snapped the book shut, a disgraceful _smack!_ resounding through the attic as the old parchment pages slammed together.

"Like you would know anything about poetry," Violet said stiffly, rankled. She moved to grab the book from his hands, but he feinted and removed it from her arm's reach with a playful wag of his finger.

"Uh-uh," he tutted good-naturedly and narrowed his eyes at her. "I do come with news for you," he said, a lopsided grin on his face.

Violet frowned. "What do you mean, 'news'?" she demanded, and he laughed at her authoritative voice.

"A little birdy tells me that a new family is moving into the house," he said, and at her disbelieving look, he amended his statement. "A little birdy tells me that a certain woman, near and dear to both our hearts, is moving into the house."

Violet's jaw slackened. It couldn't be. It had to be some sick joke. There was no way…

"Constance, the love of my altogether too-short life, wrinkled bitch that she can sometimes be, is moving in with a little boy in tow. She's told me that he can be a bit of a handful."


End file.
